Can we clear up some Hebrew grammar?
“When you go out to battle against your enemies, and the LORD your God hands them over to you and you take them away captive...” (Dt 21:10)
Each Hebrew verb has its own preposition, which is not always the same as English. Translators often try to help by using the English preposition, which helps with basic understanding, but sometimes strips a great lesson. In Hebrew, a person doesn't battle AGAINST an enemy, but ON them.
When you go out to war [on] your enemies אֹיְבֶיךָ...
The Father doesn't want you to go out against your enemies. That implies push-pushback-push-pushback. Where does it end? Instead, He wants you to go out to war ON the enemy. Get on top. Subject him so that he doesn't rise again. Squash him completely. In spiritual terms, take your appetites, emotions, desires, and intellect, and subject them to the smackdown of Spirit and the Word of Truth. They will then become best friends instead of adversaries.
There is the literal Torah, and there is the Torah that turns the eyes inward. These are the eyes that leap the hurdle of externalizing enemies, and they look for the rebel enemy within one’s own thoughts and heart. In that sense, the enemy of Israel must be warred on one’s self. What if you insert yourself as the “enemy” within the various scenarios in the Torah portion?
- Eat food and drink alcohol to excess or practice addictive behaviors.
- Rebelling against your “father and mother,” the ways of the patriarchs and matriarchs, who were tested and walked in faithfulness.
- Leaving a corpse all night on the tree to humiliate the One who created him. Refusing to forgive others or one’s self humiliates the Creator.
Why should we try inserting ourselves as the "enemy" in Ki Teitze's passages? It falls during the season of repentance before the Day of the Awakening Blast and Yom HaKippurim, the time of self-examination. If the King is in the field, then we need to likewise "go out" and seek every enemy that stands between us and a beautiful resurrection. Including ourselves. Mostly ourselves. Okay, ourselves.
Ki Teitze describes the war on one’s own flesh and blood. Literally:
- If any person has a stubborn and rebellious son who does not obey his father or his mother, and when they discipline him, he does not listen to them, then his father and mother shall seize him, and bring him out to the elders of his city at the gateway of his hometown. And they shall say to the elders of his city, ‘This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious; he does not obey us, he is thoughtless and given to drinking.’ Then all the men of his city shall stone him to death; so you shall eliminate the evil from your midst, and all Israel will hear about it and fear.
- Now if a person has committed a sin carrying a sentence of death and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree, his body is not to be left overnight on the tree, but you shall certainly bury him on the same day (for he who is hanged is cursed of God), so that you do not defile your land which the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance.” (Dt 21:18-23)
Why is he a rebellious son? A glance at the structure for "stubborn" might lend a clue:
“And they shall say to the elders of his city, ‘This son of ours is stubborn (סוֹרֵר) and rebellious; he does not obey us, he is thoughtless and given to drinking.’” (Dt 21:20)
סוֹרֵר
Samekh ס= rolling, wheel, support
Reish ר = head, origin, beginning
The rebel is rolling two heads! His own head is butting against his parents, the elders', the communities', and even the Fathers'. Once the parents and elders have exhausted all disciplinary and instructive interventions, the Torah prescribes death to the unrepentant son. Just to set your mind at ease, there is no known incident of this ever having been put in practice in Jewish history. The criteria were so exacting that no child ever met them. Still, there is something in reading about it that teaches us something.
There are two types of punishment inflicted: stoning (first), and then hanging. First a person guilty of execution by stoning was pushed off a rocky cliff, then hanged (once dead). Oddly, hanging a human being can be translated two different ways:
כִּֽי־קִלְלַת אֱלֹהִים
“for a curse/insult of Elohim”
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“...his body is not to be left overnight on the tree, but you shall certainly bury him on the same day (for he who is hanged is cursed of God), so that you do not defile your land which the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance.” (Dt 21:23)
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“...rather you shall surely bury him on that day, for a hanging person is an insult of God; and you shall not make impure your land, which HASHEM, your God, gives you as an inheritance.” (Artscroll)
Because the human being is in the image of Elohim, it is an insult to his Creator, yet the death is a result of the human’s departure from his image. His “head” or authority and self-will, are destroyed two ways, stoning and hanging.
These instructions for a rebellious son in the Torah portion sound oddly like a previous portion, Shemot: Mishpatim. While the instructions in Ki Tetzei concern a rebellious child, the previous portion directly addressed the Children of Israel as a nation.
This is why these particular instructions may never have been practiced. When the details of the case had to meet the criteria for judgment, there is no known case where the rebellious child attained the level of the death penalty. The sages acknowledge this is not something one could expect to actually do, but to study in order to find the rebellion and lust inside one’s self.
The known precedent in Mishpatim was applied to adults, not children. Adults who were children of Israel.
The “shame” endured by the Holy One at a human being’s hanging after the death penalty may have to do with the “Name” that is in the person. These judgments are executed upon an Israelite who has both been instructed and KNOWS how to keep the Torah, has been warned concerning his behavior, and yet persists in spite of the Holy Name he carries by his covenant status.
As a rebellious child is a shame to his parents, so a rebellious human being desecrates the Name of his Creator.
The following text suggests that the Angel of the Presence (Yeshua) will NOT forgive rebellious sins and allow the rebel to enter the Land of Israel:
- 20 Behold, I am going to send an angel before you to guard you along the way and to bring you into the place which I have prepared.
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21 Be attentive to him and obey his voice; do not be rebellious toward him, for he will not pardon your rebellion, since My name is in him.
- 22 But if you truly obey his voice and do all that I say, then I will be an enemy to your enemies and an adversary to your adversaries.
- 23 For My angel will go before you and bring you into the land of the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Canaanites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites; and I will completely destroy them. (Ex 23:20-23)
23:22 כִּי אִם־שָׁמֹעַ תִּשְׁמַע בְּקֹלוֹ וְעָשִׂיתָ כֹּל אֲשֶׁראֲדַבֵּר וְאָֽיַבְתִּי אֶת־אֹיְבֶיךָ וְצַרְתִּי אֶת־צֹרְרֶֽיךָ׃
In context, the “first” potentially rebellious son Israel was instructed concerning war and the supernatural hornet called the tzirah, just like the context of war and enemies begin the passage of the rebellious son in Ki Teitze. “When you go out to battle against your enemies, and the LORD your God hands them over to you and you take them away captive...” (Dt 21:10)
Let's return to the potentially "first rebellious son" in Exodus, the Children of Israel.
The Exodus 23 context describes their behavior and how the Father will destroy their “enemies”:
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I will send My terror ahead of you, and throw into confusion all the people among whom you come, and I will make all your enemies turn their backs to you.
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And I will send hornets ahead of you so that they will drive out the Hivites, the Canaanites, and the Hittites from you. I will not drive them out from you in a single year, so that the land will not become desolate and the animals of the field become too numerous for you. I will drive them out from you little by little, until you become fruitful and take possession of the land. (Ex 23:24-30, context of the Angel of the Presence in Whom was the Name, and his Father, the “parent” of the One traveling before Israel and of Israel itself.
The text emphasizes how the battles will take place. Instead of the sons of Israel making endless wars, the tzirah, or supernatural hornet, would go before them. This would ensure the enemies were subjected completely, little by little, so that they could not rise up. As we will see, these bugs come up from Abaddon.
Likewise, Yeshua, the obedient son, is making war on death to put it under his feet completely in the end. He will make the way for the Children of Israel to re-possess the Garden of Eden at the resurrection:
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For since by a man death came, by a man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, after that those who are Christ’s at His coming, then comes the end, when He hands over the kingdom to our God and Father, when He has abolished all rule and all authority and power. For He must reign until He has put all His enemies under His feet. The last enemy that will be abolished is death. For HE HAS PUT ALL THINGS IN SUBJECTION UNDER HIS FEET. But when He says, “All things are put in subjection,” it is clear that this excludes the Father who put all things in subjection to Him. When all things are subjected to Him, then the Son Himself will also be subjected to the One who subjected all things to Him, so that God may be all in all. (1 Co 15:21-28)
Messiah Yeshua makes war on the enemies of the Father who rebel against His kingdom. As an obedient son, he does not try to usurp the authority of the Father or take to gluttonous, drunken rule as most earthly rulers. He crushes the head of the serpent at every battle beginning with "It is written...," not "I feel," "I think," or "I want." He will fast when it is time to fast. He will not tempt the Father with sketchy interpretations and applications. He will not bow down to any other will or head...EVEN HIS OWN. In the crushing, he prays, "Not MY will, but Yours be done."
Obedient sons squash the enemy's heads, no matter how many. They can war ON the enemy because obedient children have only one head and understand authority. They do not seize upon the privileged status as sons in order to defy, shame, and abuse their "Parent."
The flying creature called the tzira in Exodus 23 both blinded its victims (confused them) and rendered them sterile in a piercing action, leaving the victims without fruit; in effect, blotting out their names. The sage Rashi comments on the tzira in his analysis of Deuteronomy 7:20, which reads in the Artscroll version:
- Also the tzira will HASHEM, your God, send among them, until the survivors and hidden ones perish before you.
Rashi writes that it is a species of flying insect like a locust that would “shoot bile at them and make them impotent and blind their eyes wherever they would hide.” The details about the tzira blinding (above) and castrating (below) correspond with the tzira’s ability to blind with its sting like scorpions:
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And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star from heaven which had fallen to the earth; and the key of the bottomless pit was given to him. And he opened the bottomless pit; and smoke went up out of the pit, like the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened by the smoke of the pit. And out of the smoke came forth locusts upon the earth; and power was given them, as the scorpions of the earth have power. (Re 9:3)
The tzirah goes forth from the Pit at the Father's command. How outrageous would it be if hell-bugs are more obedient than the Father's children, His precious creations?
The rebellious son’s eventual death prevents the seed from reproducing in the earth. It cuts off the rebellious seed-head from above, the physical body, and the root of bitter rebellion from below. No future rebellion can spring from the rebellious son’s seed or root. There will be no more shaming the Name of their Creator.
Yes, heads will roll when the hell-bugs fly, but faithful sons and daughters will let those Heaven-sent bugs fight the battle. And when the shofar blows, the children who warred ON the enemy will come in with great joy in their Deliverer.
Do you hear buzzing?
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